It's cool they had a fan make that teaser, and it's cute and funny and all, but...

This? a week after Riot's Jinx vid that got 14 million views?--Despite all my scathing, it's still good work, and its premise is perfect.

Bliz needs an ace up their sleeve... Riot's hitting a lot of the right buttons... they have right from the start, with all the risks back then, and all the success they somewhat deserve now. What Bliz still deserves this late in the game they have to prove all over, with more than "me too".

Nein, nein, nein! Do not be so little! When I say answer it, I mean respond to it, to Them.

Furthermore, Riot is trying to establish LoL as popculture significance, while Blizzard is opening this as fan service and inside joke... that's not enough, we'll see if that's all. Maybe this teaser shouldn't be taken seriously as to what to expect, but it sure spurs the worry they are still not taking it seriously in production value. Is that going to be a SC2 or D3... or is this a half-hearted Hearthstone?--if so what do they possibly expect from that?... If they'd take this seriously, they sure have a good chance even this late, but if it's just their red-headed step-child... I don't know. speculation, speculation...

Nein, nein, nein! Do not be so little! When I say answer it, I mean respond to it, to Them.

Mwahaha, now that's more like it. If they keep it coming like that, Riot and Valve got some serious competition to worry about after all. And Riot won't just so easily bully Blizzard around on the sports event scene, Blizz got the money, and a foothold on that through SC2.

It sure looks cool for some mindless bruisin, but also it all comes off so forced, silly incoherent... I don't know. X|. At least Blizz got talent, maybe the only real one in that part of the market.

But it's kinda a shame, while Blizzard got better talent shaping up their characters, overall that Jinx music video got more charme... Riot's not that easy out yet still, I guess. The thing though is, what may beat out everyone else eventually, Blizzard's franchises are just too well developed and marketed now, all their characters got so much more punch in meaning through their huge single player campaigns, the rest of the market just can't compete with that in terms of identification, in that sense it's still so much more coherent than the others, no matter how silly it gets.

Nein, nein, nein! Do not be so little! When I say answer it, I mean respond to it, to Them.

Glad they're getting rid of last-hitting and basically doing it all ToB-style, but it's too little, too late. People will play, of course, but LoL is entrenched. Also the level design looks atrocious visually. Lots of maps, though.

The similarities to TOB is why I thought you'd be a good design lead on that project. I still think the game is trying to figure out what it's supposed to be. I don't think it has an audience really. I can't think of who would want to play it over any other game.

* Shared rewards. This is the only way to get real hero diversity. It actually sounds like they're looking to support different psychographic player profiles, along the lines of pre-4E D&D and Magic. Previous "hero brawlers" (I...actually like that term for the genre -- sue me) have only done this superficially, on an ease-of-use spectrum from "simple" (Ashe) to "fuck off" (Rumble). That spectrum is valid, but it doesn't support truly different kinds of players in the way that, say, Fighters and Wizards do in D&D, or that Timmy, Johnny, and Spike do in Magic.

PS: One of the biggest problems with hero brawlers historically has been the snowball effect. Every time you kill an enemy, you get rewarded and they get punished. The resulting positive feedback loop spirals out of control very quickly, and it's common for a game to be more or less over in the first 10 minutes, even though it takes another 20 minutes to play out. Shared rewards don't solve this problem, but they sure as hell blunt it, while doing a lot to encourage teamwork in the process.

* Leafier skill trees. A long time ago on a modding site far, far away, I said: "I think skills would be served better by increasing in number than by increasing in complexity. Give players more options, force them to make more choices, let them build their character, which is a huge part of the psychological investment in this kind of game." Still rings true.

However, I want to see what they do with it, given the stated target of an average game length of 15-20 minutes, because, to borrow another old wc3c post: "It's possible to win a game of DotA in 20-30 minutes (less, actually). Yet, this kind of game is deeply unsatisfying. Why? Because, for one thing, you get to do relatively little character-building. This is a core part of the WC3 AoS experience. Designing it out of the game is a recipe for failure, in my opinion. 30 minutes is probably a low bound for game length, with 45 being ideal. You can [...] play with the speed at which experience and resources are awarded, but speeding these things up too much will have a negative impact on the game. If you're having to level a skill or run off to the shop every 30 seconds then there's too much interruption of the competitive aspect of the game (not to mention the fact that the more levels there are, the less valuable a given level is); but if you aren't getting to level skills or buy items often enough then the competitive aspect isn't yielding enough of a reward. Fast games are unsatisfying because you don't get to develop your character enough, and slow games are unsatisfying because your character runs out of options for development (ideally you want to approach your character's maximum potential as the game ends). The existing speed is actually fairly well balanced between these two extremes, and it sets the tempo for everything else."

tl;dr: Heroes of the Storm claims to have both engaging character development and short game lengths. These are in many ways at odds. Outcome TBD.

* Game modes. Not only different environments, but different objectives and in-game events. I'm not impressed by the look of the levels we've seen so far, but I am impressed by the variety. Finally, someone is experimenting with alternatives to ye olde base warfare. Makes me want to go back and play some Keys of Sealing.

--

The question, as always, is whether Heroes of the Storm will have "lifestyle" appeal. Games like WoW and LoL are successful because they draw you in in a way that the game becomes part of who you are. Now Blizzard is trying to do with Heroes of the Storm what every would-be dethroner of WoW has tried and failed to do. It'll be interesting to see if, between the gameplay and the built-in audience for their brands, they can pull it off.

I'm not sure the reduced average game length will be a problem if they get rid of that boring 10-15 minute long mostly passive period of farming and trying not to die. If you get to dive right into the action, a 15-20 minute average could be ideal, especially if they also fix the problem of games that are already decided not ending for another 10 minutes.

The idea of quests is honestly one of the cooler sides of the game. It's something LoL has tried dabbling in, on a superficial lore level at least, but has never had the guts to commit to (their other maps have objective quests, but they don't devote any other time to those maps because they won't make them $$$).

Pretty excited to see how it turns out, applied for a beta key the moment I saw the opportunity.

My only problem with the game is that i never feel powerful. There isn't really the feeling of progression that items provide in other games. The talent tree is cool but unless you are absolutely farming the other team, you never really out level them. On top of that a lot of the objectives are so random and so brutal that if the other team is getting steamrolled and then gets a lucky spawn your team could easily lose the game from there on.

I understand the whole snowballing thing, but I'd like to feel some reward for playing well.

I'm actually somewhat impressed. At this point it's sounding like it could be a pretty good game, and they've done enough to make it stand out from its competitors. I just hope Blizzard doesn't fuck this up like they've fucked up so many things lately.

RageAgainstVoid wrote:But it's kinda a shame, while Blizzard got better talent shaping up their characters, overall that Jinx music video got more charme... Riot's not that easy out yet still, I guess. The thing though is, what may beat out everyone else eventually, Blizzard's franchises are just too well developed and marketed now, all their characters got so much more punch in meaning through their huge single player campaigns, the rest of the market just can't compete with that in terms of identification, in that sense it's still so much more coherent than the others, no matter how silly it gets.

Riot are hurting a lot in others areas now, and people are getting frustrated. The game is plagued with abusive behaviour, an ex-riot member essentially abusers the servers at will and banishes accounts to other servers while white knighting a girl who has been elo-boosted. Not to mention the ranked system is falling apart to the point where different Riot members have given different explanations as to how the system works, only for everyone to see that none of those explanations are what is happening. Pros and casual players alike are beginning to complain daily in public spaces.

The Europe West server is still unstable, despite the severe backlash they have been getting. The new 'amazing' jungle changers are literally a tacky looking creep camp placed incredibly awkwardly on the map.

The game is stale, and has been for well over a year. New champions are either incredibly awkward or incredibly op, and at Worlds and latest competitions only an extremely small pool of the total heroes are actually played. This is a direct result of ineffective nerfing of the game, the lack of understanding of what a healthy game is, and the total prevention of allowing players to develop counter play to Flavour of the Month heroes and strategies before changing them out and making OP become irrelevant.

While their advertising and production values are enticing to some, they keep falling in other areas - and there is definitely dissatisfaction and discontent brooding in the player base. The fact that Riot have made no real strides to improve any of these aspects isn't doing them good.

This is basically Blizzard's big play to get back in favour - since the merger they have been nothing but awful, and as you said they have the character identification and money to splash the scene and really hurt LoL. From what was said, it sounds like the game has a long way to go - but we can only hope Blizzard have finally worked it out. Hearthstone is showing promising signs, so it's really time to turn it up a notch.

I'm super excited that Blizzard might be getting it's mojo back. This sparks feelings reminiscent of when I was younger and excited about games in a way that no game has made me feel in a long time. Here's to hoping. And yes I would love a key =P